


gravity

by goddcoward



Series: i hate you, i love you (i hate that i love you) [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Dragons, Emperor Madara, Established Relationship, Hmm., Hurt/Comfort, LISTEN........IK..............., Light Angst, M/M, MadaTobi Week 2019, Mutual Pining, Mythology & Folklore, Original Mythos, Slow Burn, dragon god tobirama dragon god tobirama dragon god tobirama, god!senju, maybe?? idk lmao, ok for the first part theyre like. baby deities. babbies......, so. im posting it for madatobi week. not even god can stop me, this is for day one though, uhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2020-12-16 10:56:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21035102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddcoward/pseuds/goddcoward
Summary: Newton’s law of universal gravitation describes a force that causes any two objects to be attracted to each other, with the force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.That is to say, the attraction is stronger between two objects that are massive and fairly close together, such as the moon and the earth, the planets and the sun, the stars and the galaxies.It is a truth universally acknowledged that the standard laws that govern existence hold no dominion over the human heart, nor any power over that forever-nebulous force known to many as emotion, and to more as a weakness.--[Tobirama is an elder god, lord of the oceans and the winter and the unknown. Madara is himself, the Uchiha Clan Head, dead set on achieving peace, but without Hashirama as his foil, he decides unification through conquest is the way to go. When he takes up the mantle of Clan Head at the ripe old age of nineteen, he immediately launches himself head-first into a war of his own making, forcing neutral and enemy Clans back into submission with the God of Shinobi by his side.There is an arranged marriage.It is not between the two of them.]





	1. reach me down my Tycho Brahé

**Author's Note:**

> hewwo. this is very short. but its also pretty good i think. please give it a read :-)
> 
> im mostly just posting this before the madatobi week grace period runs out even though it's not really ready yet so have some baby god tobirama
> 
> actually the grace period might already be over so 🤔 
> 
> anyway this was gonna be different adn shorter and then my hand slipped so now its different and longer adn there's gonna be........ a bit before tobirama + madara actually meet so hold on to your hats fellas!

**TOBIRAMA**

He comes to in a cold, cold blackness, cradled in a depression in the sand with his limbs tucked in close to his body and his body itself curled up tight, all of the waters of the world hiding him and protecting him and concealing his sensitive eyes from the scorching sear of what he would come to identify as the _sun._

He comes to in the darkest, most inhospitable depths of the abyss, ensconced within the heart of ocean trenches that no other life has yet managed to adapt to, and immediately, he knows that he is _home._ Home is a concept that does not yet exist, but it’s also a feeling, pulsing warm and bright in his chest, bringing sluggish ichor to a bright boil.

When he slips open vulnerable eyes to observe his nursery grounds, he discovers that he radiates a soft white light, glowing pale in the nothingness like a star gone cold. All around him stretch barren dunes of silt and sand, soft and yielding beneath his touch, with his resting mound being the highest of them all. 

Its beauty is a stark one, bare and unwelcoming, but to him it is glorious in its simplicity. Perhaps it is ugly, perhaps it is lifeless, perhaps it is hostile, but to him it is home, and for that reason and that reason alone, it is precious.

There is little of interest to him, here, ten thousand meters beneath the surface. There is little to challenge and intrigue him, little to inspire him, little to draw his attention away from the concept of _up,_ away from the bright burn of the life he can sense far above him in the surface-waters. In the abyss, he has a closer proximity to the massive upwellings of natural chakra that exist beneath the seafloor in bubbling oceans of magma, but up there – up there he could _thrive._

The desire to leave his home for the surface-waters pulses beneath his sternum with a strange, dull ache, a vice gripping tight around the sluggish muscle of his heart, making every beat _thump-bump_ with the need to swim upwards.

After a few centuries the pull is unbearable, and he sheds all of the regrets and concerns that had been keeping him tied to his nursery grounds. It’s not like he’ll never be able to return, after all, and the need to _explore_ his domain is undeniable in its urgency. He is the ocean, _all_ of the ocean, and he has known her depths and trenches; it is time for him to know her light-filled surfaces too.

He leaves his nursery grounds for the first time ever nearly a whole millennium after he woke there, and from there, everything is changed.

In the heart of the surface-waters, the world beneath the sun, everything is so colorful, so vivid, so _bright;_ the light burns at his sensitive eyes, and so he takes shelter for a time in the nest of a moray eel. 

It is then that he discovers the concept of _night,_ cool and dark and much more welcoming than the _day _had been. After hours pass in the rocky marine crevasse, the blinding rays of sunlight dim considerably. The waters go from bright clear cerulean to deep, somber blue, and the eels are returning to their habitat for the evening. It is safe to explore, now, safe to wander about his oceans without risk of hurting his eyes. 

There had been no skylights in the abyss. The only light there was produced by certain creatures gifted enough to do so – he among them – and he finds that the gentle pale glow his entire body radiates is more than sufficient for his sharp eyes to see by, with the moonlight and the starlight. They’re adapted to the depths, adapted to the trenches, adapted to the ocean floor where no creature sees the light of the sun, or, for that matter, the moon; it’s not entirely shocking that exposure to such brightness would cause pain. His vision is simply adjusted to darkness.

It works wonderfully in the night-time, though, and oh, everything here is so _fascinating;_ the reef fish have retreated to their crevices and nooks until the sunrise, seeking protection from the sharks and eels and other, deeper creatures who come up to the surface-waters at night to feed. Entire squads of bioluminescent squid rise to breed, and from a distance they look like densely packed stars, like mobile underwater constellations shining softly through the nighttime.

He is disappointed to discover that it is not all long before the sun shows its face once more, and quickly he retreats back to deeper waters, back to his abyss with the giant tube worms and the marine snow and the drowned, rotted carcasses. 

He waits only long enough for the sun to set before he makes the swim upwards, and it sets a pattern for the next few centuries; he rests in his nursery grounds beneath the oceans during the day and explores the world of the surface-waters during the night.

And for a very, very long time, he is _content._

Until, that is, the pull returns, dragging him not towards the shallows but towards the _shallows,_ towards the land, towards the verdant fire-fountain of chakra that he can sense blazing across the continent. It is by no means familiar, in no ways recognizable, but it is attractive all the same, and he finds himself helplessly drawn into its orbit as the moon circles the planet, as the planet circles the sun.

The night he plans to take his first steps on dry ground is dark and lightless, the waters still and solemn as he swims-swims-swims in the direction of the land. The new moon watches as he follows the waves to their breaking points, dipping his fragile, soft head into the naked black air for the first time ever. 

It’s indescribable. Before, water had been omnipresent – there was never any other medium in which he could exist – and the sensation of _wet_ was a foreign one, for he had nothing with which to compare it. Now, the wind scrapes at his bare cheeks, a thin film of seawater clinging to his skin, plastering his hair to his skull. The chill is a pleasant surprise, somewhat reminiscent of the coldness of his nursery grounds, even if it is much, much warmer here, here _above _the surface-waters.

How long had he spent not even knowing such a thing existed?

He’s a strong swimmer, one with his element, and it is not long before the seafloor brushes at his toes, not long at all before he cannot swim at all anymore for the shallowness of the shoreline. There is still sand, is still silt, and beneath it he can sense the horseshoe crabs and the shallow-water stingrays and the conches and the mollusks, but for the first time there is also _air._ For the first time gravity is something he must actively withstand in order to move, pushing away from the ground beneath him as he crawls out of the ocean spray.

Standing is such an alien sensation that he almost doesn’t notice the crystals collecting on his skin, the hoarfrost spreading over his being, the water freezing against him where it touches the nighttime air. The cold is familiar, welcome; it blankets him in understanding, and as the ice solidifies, he wobbles upright on soft muscles and fluid bones.

When he looks up to the new moon, up, up, up the sandy hill, up to where the beach gives way to land-grasses and forests, there is something – _someone_ – standing before him, a curious creature with wide dark eyes and gleaming dark hair and glowing dark skin, dressed in the vibrant greens of a nature spirit and radiating such intense chakra that he is struck by the urge to close his eyes and rub at them with his small fists to keep out light that does not exist.

Something in him recognizes the other being where his eyes and mind do not, and when they come closer, feet leaving tiny imprints behind in the sand, he does not shy away. 

_Hashirama._

[**Anija,**] he warbles, the sound of his unused voice soft and strange in the midnight air. [**Anija, Anija, Anija.**] It catches in his throat, the only word he knows, the only word he _needs_ to know; when Hashirama hears it, his smile is brilliant, all teeth and dimples and bright, bright eyes.

[**I’ve been waiting for you, Tobirama! What took you so long?**]

He has no name that he is aware of, but he supposes that _Tobirama_ will suffice well enough for the now, and when he thinks of that odd word in conjunction with the concept of himself, it just – fits. [**Anija,**] he repeats, the sound of the spirit-tongue familiar and strange all at once as it comes out of his throat. [**Anija, Anija.**]

Hashirama’s laughter is like summertime, like daylight, like the sun that filters through his kelp forests to turn the saltwater emerald green and molten gold, and Tobirama takes his first steps onto land with his anija’s hand wrapped safely around his own. It is warm and dry and comforting to touch, and it is a sensation that he will visit millennia in the future and weep for its loss.


	2. i would know him when we meet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello bad bitches and evil bitches and mildly antagonistic bitches i was stuck on this with less than 500 words for actual literal months and then i was like but what if hashirama as the first of them senju boys has to make all of the rest of them and then i was like what if hashirama is thalassophobic and overcomes that because he just loves baby brother tobi That Much and then suddenly there was 2k of me crying about how poorly adapted hashi would be to a deep-ocean environment and how he pushes thru that because Precious Wee Otouto
> 
> also i feel like a terrible person because while i wanted to include hashi+tobi bonding at the beginning of the world and wanted to emphasize the importance and strength of their relationship i didn't think i'd actually be able to do it so now things will hurt a lot more later on. saltwater in a wound, if you will
> 
> here are Boys. hashirama is snoft. this is entirely incomprehensible and i wish you all the best of luck in figuring out what the fuck this says bc i create nonsense sentences with my bastard hands and then i make them everyone else's problem
> 
> congratulations these words are now your problem

**HASHIRAMA**

He comes to in the blinding brilliance of the dawn of existence, the sun peering over the distant, bare horizon, the sky cast in a hundred thousand hues for which he has no name.

The warmth of the springtime floods through his veins, and laughter bubbles out of his chest in a surprised, delighted burst of sound. The noise startles the earth around him into motion, ground cracking and warping beneath his bare toes, but he is unafraid. He has nothing to fear from his element.

The soil remains stagnant, though, dormant and still and split all over, and he frowns – that vitality had filled him with a joy he’s never known before – but the magnetic pull of emotion on his bright young soul stirs it back to life.

Surprise, delight, wonder; all of these feelings follow in quick succession, and all around him the ground bursts, exploding upwards in fertile dark fountains of crumbling earth.

He loses his footing, but as soon as he falls, he’s caught in the embrace of something giant and green and _growing,_ emerging from where it had been hidden beneath the surface, thick, strong branches wrapping him in a comforting wooden hold that has him giggling uncontrollably as he rises, rises, rises.

The virgin world sees three more sunrises pass before he’s calm to the point that his powers fade away to nothingness, verdant energy filling the air with the color of emeralds and the scent of petrichor before it disperses in a fog of potent chakra.

It’s then that he notices the whispers.

At first there is just indistinct white noise falling through his head in a clutter of static, but the closer he listens, the more he understands, and the more he understands, the more he finds himself captivated.

_Hashirama…Hashirama…Hashirama…_

It takes nothing more than a twitch of his fingers to encourage his soul-tree to release him, branches unfolding and opening until he can see the sky once more, cast in a bejeweled viridian that he falls in love with immediately.

Dropping from branch to branch until he reaches the soul-tree’s roots, he is quick to discover that there is nothing he cannot fall in love with immediately. The soft sensation of grass and moss and decomposing leaves beneath his naked feet, the cool tickle of river water against his soles as he walks across streams, the chirping calls of the many creatures that have materialized in his forest since its creation; all of these are things he treasures.

_Hashirama._

The murmurs become insistent, forceful, and he – Hashirama – finds himself drawn to pay attention. He can’t quite separate the soft syllables of sound, but it turns out that he doesn’t need to.

A sudden flood of darkness overwhelming his conscious has him stumbling around blindly, but after more than a few moments he adjusts, allowing his sightless awareness of his surroundings to guide him into a meditative pose.

It’s almost like water, but Hashirama has never known water like this. He’s familiar with the clear, snowy streams that pour down furrows in the earth to congregate in a crystalline pool that laps at his toes, reeds and spikesedge emerging from substrate to fill the glittering ripple of the water with vivid viridian, water lilies and lotus buds opening their petals to the brightness of his smile. He has come to love the refreshing chill of summer-sweet freshwater.

This is something else altogether, closer to the river rapids carving canyons into his earth, but exponentially more _intense._ An icy density, an immense pressure, the impression of a superlative vastness that defies comprehension. An endless expanse of pitch-black liquid, poisonous to taste, its scale beyond description.

A distinct whisper: _Tobirama._

Hashirama claps his hands over his ears and scrunches up his face and rejects this strange, new concept with every shred of vehemence in his small being, and that colossal, primordial force for which he has no name, of which he has no understanding, begins to recede, the horrible frigid darkness ebbing away into nothingness until he can breathe without feeling like he’s drowning on dry land.

Another whisper, this one decidedly more pointed, tone acerbic: _Tobirama._

Hashirama digs his toes into the ground as moss crawls up his ankles to blanket his shins in lush softness. No, no, _no._ Yes to water, yes to swimming-holes, yes to dipping himself in that alien wetness, but he has _standards,_ and his standards are firm on this matter: _no_ to whatever _Tobirama_ is.

_**Who**ever…Tobirama…Hashirama…_

For a moment there’s the stinging tug of guilt on his heartstrings, the sense that he’s done something wrong, but if he is anything less than absolute in his disapproval of that otherness, it begins to flow in through the cracks in his conviction, inconsequential leaks building until his defenses are blown away by the surging darkness, so cold that it burns at his mind from the inside out.

_To-bi-ra-ma. Yes, yes, _ ** _yes_ ** _. Tobira-ma._

Hashirama wonders if the voice and its _terrible_ ideas about how his world should change will go away if he’s deliberate about ignoring it. He manages to haul himself to his feet; perhaps a nice long nap in his tallest, sunniest canopy will purge his head of its most recent nonsense.

He’s quick to discover that this is a _profoundly_ bad idea.

No amount of willpower can keep the sudden tsunami of sensations from engulfing his mind, and he collapses to his knees with a choked-off sob. If he thought that the deluge was potent before, it’s infinitely stronger now, and his elbows buckle under him, the vicious burn of icy darkness flooding his skull until he’s been filled to bursting.

Hashirama isn’t sure how long he’s crumpled like that, hunched over the ground, vines creeping up to wrap around his trembling form. It could be a moment, it could be an eternity, it could be any stretch of time in between; the only thing he’s certain of is the blustering roar of _TOBIRAMA-TOBIRAMA-TOBIRAMA_ that has brought him to breaking point and then far, far beyond.

It’s the most painful thing he’s ever known, agony blistering along his every synapse, hurt flushing through him until everything else is scourged away by the relentless crushing speed of the currents. It’s like being flayed, but the damage is far from superficial. Flesh and muscle stripped from bone, connective tissues charged with such power that sinew and tendon simply dissolve under the stress, every single part of him disintegrating, tearing, obliterated until he has nothing left, not even energy enough for him to scream and thrash and fight it as it happens.

** _TO-BI-RA-MA._ **

If Hashirama weren’t so blindsided by pain that composed thought exceeds his faculties, he would spare a second to share his nastiest curse word with the voice, and perhaps several seconds more to do whatever is necessary to get _Tobirama_ to _leave him alone._

Salt and iron and bile on his tongue, the blackness of the strange power so intense that it’s a blinding white, a phenomenal force shattering his resistance—

The blast of darkness loses momentum. A surge of saline suffering rinses away the damage. He is overwhelmed in an instant and then deserted just as quickly.

[**_Ow,_**] Hashirama hisses, although he’s no longer certain he’s capable of speech, or feeling, or anything at all.

The voice fills the pristine void left behind by the flooding coldness. It echoes around the inside of his head, and he would be angry at the insincerity of its apologetic tone if he could do something other than laying down and moaning.

…_Tobirama…_

That single word ringing in his mind, growing softer and softer until it dissipates altogether, nothing at all in its wake.

Nothing at all remains of whatever _that_ was, and Hashirama sprawls with his limbs thrown out, trying not to let the last abused drops of his brainpower melt out of his nose.

_Tobirama._

Everything is gone.

_Tobirama._

Everything is gone, until suddenly it isn’t, and there’s a gentle white light shining somewhere, another thought fading into existence.

_Tobirama._

Something tiny and pale and terrifyingly fragile, a marbled form that makes something in Hashirama’s chest seize and stutter and stop. A being like him but _not,_ different in every way imaginable even though Hashirama is struck by a sudden awareness of their similarities, complimentary chakra knit into their cores, a bare, wintry candor anchoring itself to Hashirama’s hazy brilliance. It doesn’t seem like it should be here, burying itself in the deepest part of him, making itself a home in the pulsing heart of who he is, but he spares a fraction of a thought to turning it away and immediately decides that he will never, ever, _ever_ do such a thing.

_Tobirama._

The creature is dainty, the pure white of driven snow, its shape blurring between a bipedal something not unlike Hashirama’s current skin and a long, slender elegance. After a brief pause it settles on the more serpentine body, gleaming platinum scales slashed by vertical stripes of slate, vibrant red fins fluttering ever-so-slightly, an alluring, alien stranger.

_Tobirama._

He approaches as quickly as he dares, attracted to this novelty by an incessant gravity he’d somehow never noticed before.

_Tobirama._

When he’s close enough to reach out with small hands and touch it, he keeps to himself, marveling at the delicate structure of its face, knotting his fingers together so that he doesn’t disturb it by succumbing to the urge to stroke one of those perfectly formed feet. It doesn’t _look _as though its graceful build could support any kind of strength or durability, but Hashirama is nonetheless convinced that it has a certain adamant steadiness, different from his own tenacity but no less effective.

_Tobirama._

Hashirama crouches, examining one of those closed eyes, almost comically oversized but still in perfect proportion. Thick, lacy eyelashes brush against its diamond cheek, and something in the back of his mind produces the sound of sweet soprano laughter, the chill of snowflakes landing on bared faces, a sense of marrow-deep serenity that he never would have known he was missing.

_Tobirama._

A flickering movement behind the eyelid, and Hashirama stands up. He needs to prepare; Tobirama is so very sensitive to sunlight, and he won’t understand the blinding pain of the surface world.

_Yes, Tobirama, yes, yes, Tobirama, _ ** _yes._ **

He sits up with a groan, limbs locked with soreness, head throbbing, but when he looks down at himself, he’s still in one piece, which seems like it should be a miracle, but he can’t muster anything more than faint relief at finding himself whole.

Well, not _whole._ Apparently, there is a shard of Hashirama’s soul out there, a _Tobirama_ who he didn’t know he needed until now.

The vulnerability of realizing that he is no longer completely self-sufficient, if he ever was, is eclipsed in half a heartbeat by the strength of his Tobirama-feelings.

Hashirama turns his gaze to the horizon, to the glittering mass of saltwater that hadn’t been there before he collapsed. There are still trees and stars and budding flowers, but – that was not _love._ Not even remotely.

_Love_ is for Tobirama and his caustic wit and the mask of icy pride that means he won’t ever _ask_ for Hashirama even when he needs him. _Love_ is for the baby brother hidden in the most hostile depths of the oceans now swallowing his land. _Love_ is for big red eyes that shine impossibly bright when Hashirama manages to do something right, for musical giggles pitched like shattered icicles, for the sake of a pale little boy splashing in the shallows, his quicksilver mind impossibly fast and impossibly sharp with an unparalleled genius that knows no measure of restraint.

An echo of a memory that does not yet exist: Tobirama’s exquisite face thawed by a smile broad enough that his unreasonable excess of fangs is bright beneath the moonlight. An impossibly affectionate warmth set into every line of a face more suited to frowns than to fondness. A ramble of scientific jargon that’s been going on for at least half an hour now as they wade in the delta and change it to their liking.

_Yes, Tobirama, yes, Tobirama, yes._

Hashirama’s footsteps fill with ocean water as he makes his way towards the shoreline, algae and phytoplankton turning his tracks bright green.

All he has to do now is wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Babie Dragon Tobirama and hashirama thinks he's cute and precious and then he meets baby person tobirama and he's knocked flat on his ass by the level of criminal adorableness.
> 
> basically
> 
> hashi, hallucinating himself a brother: oh a very cute wee little dragon kit! small and needs protection :-)  
tobirama, emerging from the abyss, Very Small with no scales at all and skin that burns in seconds under the sun and eyes too sensitive for daylight, chubby little toddler cheeks, stumbling as he walks because his legs are short and he's never had to walk before: nija! nija! :-) <3  
hashi, now literally just a puddle of goo, maybe something inside of him is exploding because there's no other logical explanation for this feeling: ohfhf my g.lods,,, abbabie,,,,,, ToBi,Ra-ChAn,,,, NIJA LOVES YOU!!!!!!
> 
> anyway i'm emo now. don't forget to leave comments reminding me that i'm bad at writing children and don't know how anything works but especially not original mythos that i definitely absolutely 100% have all planned out down to the smallest parables because i am just that bitch and of course i am not spending most of my time watching river monsters and playing animal crossing. thank you

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! lmk if there's anything you have to say in the comments section adn please remember that i am Not actually accepting requests at this time so if you have em hold onto them thank you!!
> 
> blease; comment and kudœs. theyre my lifeblood. thank you


End file.
